Chris Hipkins has admitted that he hasn’t yet bothered to read the Ministry of Health’s testing strategy.
Wait! What? There are two strategies for testing? How can there be a Government testing strategy that is different from the Ministry of Health’s testing strategy?
So, let’s get this straight. We are told to trust the science, that the boffins have got this. They’ve prepared a strategy that ignores testing of everyone, and just tests those with symptoms. The minister hasn’t bothered to even read that. Instead, the Government ministers prepared their own strategy, that presumably is different to the MoH strategy.
They don’t know whether they are Arthur or Martha. The right hand is acting independently of the left hand while the mouth says something entirely different again.
It seems that the Ministry of Health are taking cabinet directives as mere suggestions and doing what they want.
It beggar’s belief that they aren’t testing asymptomatic people, at least at the border, and then they act all surprised when we get an outbreak. It’s been reported that up to 80% of people who get the Chinese plague are asymptomatic.
I can just imagine how the discussions go between the Minister and the Ministry of Health. It will be straight out of Yes, Minister. The minister will ask if ‘the‘ plan is being implemented, and the MoH staff will be saying, ‘Yes, Minister, ‘a’ plan is being implemented”, without letting on that they are doing whatever the hell they feel like.
It shows what a bunch of incompetent ministers we have running the show, and how unaccountable the Ministry of Health is.
But the Government can hardly sack the Director-General as they helped elevate him to sainthood.
I wonder if the Ministry of Health have read the Government’s strategy?
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